Pairs Trading

If anyone in interested in additional good info on pairs trading, check out "Andy's spread trading journal" on elitetrader. He shows you his actual trades.


Please search for it as i don't know how to link it.

Cheers
Scoobie
 
Quote from scoobie27:

Does anyone know if pairs trading can be done on the futures indexes?

eg buying the ES and selling the ER2 or vice versa?

Of course it can be done.....can you make money, that's a different question all together.
 
Quote from Don Bright:

With people making over $250K doing nothing but the openings, I would say it is working fine. Things change, we have to adapt of course, but adapting is a continuing requirement for successful trading.

And, again, the openings are just a part of successful trading plan.

Bottom line is what counts, as always.

Don


Im sure there are "people" making over 250k a year doing Openings.

The comment was "Isn't it fair to say that today the Opening Only strategy doesn't produce the returns, with the ease, that it did even 5 years ago?

I believe this to be true.
 
Quote from 123456789:

Im sure there are "people" making over 250k a year doing Openings.

The comment was "Isn't it fair to say that today the Opening Only strategy doesn't produce the returns, with the ease, that it did even 5 years ago?

I believe this to be true.

Hard to tell for sure, but I think the automation has more than made up for any possible dillution, just from what I see.

Don
 
Quote from segv:


It is pretty easy to understand that a diversified pairs strategy is really just short gamma, short vega, long correlation. It should also be pretty easy to understand that regressing the universe of highly liquid stocks to find the subset with a stationary residual is a pretty easy problem to solve. That ease of implementation is precisely why these analytics are worthless. That in turn is the reason that Don Bright cannot find a stable hedge ratio or time-frame for his pairs strategy. Before any sheep here go spending money with PairCo or some other vendor, I posted the 200 lines of C# (SmartQuant) code for creating a pairs basket based on Vidamurthy's "Distance Vector" on my web site. As to the other poster, who required 70,000 lines of code to create a basket tracking system, all I can say is "wow". You can tweak the parameters and horizons in my code to pick different baskets all day. Alternatively, you could just take my word for it that this area has been fully exploited already, and that those touting this as a high-alpha strategy probably have an agenda.

The above listed web site links to Amazon.

Do you have the correct link to the website listing the C# code?
 
It still cracks me up that those who really think that there is "code" or a "system" that will make them money won't believe that traders who actually trade, using some quant tools, and a lot of fundamental data, seem to make good money.

You can throw around all the "greeks" in the world, but can you throw around profits like (for example) my brother and so many pairs traders do?

These same people seem to point to the "gods" at "hedge funds" and say "wow" - and, yet, many of these successful funds are using nearly the same strategies that our guys are able to use (due to capital usage, etc.).

Trading is not for everyone, and specific strategies and techniques are not for everyone....but, I maintain that "profits" should be the main motivator, not one technique or another.

Don
 
You can throw around all the "greeks" in the world, but can you throw around profits like (for example) my brother and so many pairs traders do?

Are you kidding? We all know your brother's ultra-wealthy...and we know that big hedge funds control huge money...see the similarities?

The problem is that this strategy spells disaster when you take $10K and leverage it enough to have some diversified pairs. Shall I produce the PM's from a former Bright Trader who talks about Bob Bright taking over people's pair portfolios when they blow up? Nice gesture, but really just another revenue stream.

When your pockets are deep enough, you just wait for the pair to come back. Let your "traders" take the initial pain...

The fact that you're trying to minimize the issue w/ the "greeks" is telling. (and your constant usage of "etc.")
 
Quote from HoundDogOne:

...
Some numbers on my proprietary trading software to give you a rough idea:

80,000 lines of code or equivalent.. on a 7 computer network.

Equals roughly 3 man years of work...
At $50/hour = $300,000...

Mine is about 30K of very object oriented code that solves the general case, and I wrote it in a few days at night or on weekends in about three months. Although, that is not quite fair because I used libraries that I had built before for other autotrading projects of mine, so may be say six man months to a year...

Imo, the only person on this thread that has thought really hard and deep about this stuff is segv, although I think he is far too cynical on the [profitability of the] subject. Usually that means you are three ideas away from making it work. Those ideas could be monumental, or they may be a trivial realization...

I hint about it here http://www.synctrading.com/phpbb but I don't come out and say it.

nitro
 
Quote from stereo70:



The problem is that this strategy spells disaster when you take $10K and leverage it enough to have some diversified pairs. Shall I produce the PM's from a former Bright Trader who talks about Bob Bright taking over people's pair portfolios when they blow up? Nice gesture, but really just another revenue stream.


Has it occurred to you that maybe this trader just couldn't cut it and probably isn't suited for trading? How was his/her performance trading other styles?

And believe it or not there are some that start with very small accounts and gradually build it up through consistency and hard work. Don's not gonna mention the failed pairs traders, and why should he?

It is not a flaw in the methodology, the flaw is in the trader.
 
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